


It's Called LARPing, Tim

by MoesHardnessScale (Talc)



Series: Magnus and Mechanisms [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast), The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, octokittens...maybe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-20 21:54:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20682518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talc/pseuds/MoesHardnessScale
Summary: The Magnus Archives is actually just an elaborate LARP that Jonny and Ashes dreamed up one afternoon and have taken far too seriously. And by far too seriously, we mean they made up characters for themselves then dropped into a horrific world and ran free.And uh...That thing is here too? Apparently? That wasn't really planned.





	It's Called LARPing, Tim

**Author's Note:**

> My personal crack headcanon.
> 
> Stay tuned for the sister fic where The Mechanisms is just the tabletop rpg Martin makes everyone play as family bonding (I'm not actually writing that, that was a joke)

“Alright, so my character is going to be a...What’s that thing Ivy is?” Jonny looks up from his mass of blood-stained spreadsheets to squint at the Mechanism across from him.

“Annoying?” Ashes offers, not bothering to take their eyes off their own pile of papers, which unlike Jonny’s are kept in neat stacks and very obviously devoid of any stains, bloody or otherwise. 

“That too, but no the uh...The thing she does? Wait, what does Ivy even do…?”

“I thought she was our navigator?”

“Is she? Last I checked, navigators don’t ask so many bloody questions.”

“Oh, that’d be the archivist thing.”

“That’s it! I’m going to play an archivist!” Jonny grins, feral and triumphant. 

Ashes gives Jonny a woeful look before sighing and jotting something down on their character sheet. “Well, I suppose if we’re going for irony, my character will be a cop.”

“That’s the spirit!” 

* * *

“...What are they doing?” Brian asks Tim warily. 

Tim shrugs. They’re both standing across the room, watching the two Mechanisms who sit at the old metal table and keep rolling betting dice only to write down on their piles and piles of papers numbers that cannot possibly mean anything. “Fuck if I know. Some sort of weak mortal nonsense.” Tim responds, dark and sardonic. 

He’s sulking, though he won’t admit it. Days are a lot more fun when they’re dropping on places unexpectedly and wreaking havoc, but Jonny and Ashes have been at this for months now and he’s. So. Bored. Five more minutes of this and he’ll be taking shots at Marius just to stave off some mind numbing boredom. 

“Why don’t you try joining them?” Drumbot offers. The scathing look he gets shuts him right up, though. Evidently this wasn’t a gunpowder sort of fun those two were planning. “Just an offer…”

Tim huffs. “At least with them gone we can finally sing our own songs.”

“We still don’t have our own songs...They’re all Jonny’s songs, you know that, right?”

“Shut up, Brian.”

-

“Mine's going to be called Basira. You figure out yours yet?”

Jonny shrugs. “Fuck if I’m ever going to remember a new fuckin name. I’ll just go by Jonny.”

“Can’t help but feel that’s against the spirit of the game, Jonny.” Ashes gives him a pointed look. For the game to be fun they gotta follow the rules...Right? Probably. Maybe. Look, if they were going through all this effort just to play this new game they’re going all out or not at all. 

“Ugh alright then, Jonathan. Hows that sound?” He responds rather belligerently, glaring at Ashes. 

“We’ll you’ve always been a prick, suppose you’ll now just be a pompous prick.”

* * *

_ “Test… Test… Test… 1, 2, 3… Right. Ahem..My name is Jonathan Sims.” _

“Is that really the voice he chose?” Marius remarks, only seconds after the beginning of the first tape of the ‘LARP’ game’s recording starts. They’re all gathered together around a positively ancient mortal recording device, listening to Jonny’s voice as it takes on his new persona.

“This is stupid, why are we even listening to this.” Tim grouses, no for the first time protesting against even humouring this game, though he shows no sign of leaving before he hears everything. 

Marius chuckles. “Jealous much?”

“Hush it, I want to listen.” Raphaella shoves the baron, keeping her gaze on the tape. 

_ “I work for the Magnus Institute, London, an organisation dedicated to academic research into the esoteric and the paranormal.” _

“Sounds a bit like his voice for Inspector Lyf, doesn’t it?” Von Raum seems utterly focused on interrupting every. Single. Line. 

“Based on Jonny’s range of storytelling voices, his attempt at sounding like a posh bastard _ has _to be made of 86% the same vocal tones as he used for the Inspector.” Ivy pipes in. 

“Shut up, both of you!” The science officer shoves Von Raum again. “I want to hear the story.”

“Who even cares about anoth-” Marius cuts himself off when Raphaella looks away from the recorder to glare at him. He mimes zipping his lips shut and they all fall into silence.

…

…

…

“Oh look, Tim, he named one of the mortals after you!”

“Alright, that’s it.” 

"Wait, Tim, not the-!"

* * *

"So is it pronounced calliope or calliope?" No one even bothers to shush Brian as he questions the same thing Jonny and his 'archival assistant' npc were just talking about. 

"It's _calliope_." Raphaella answers. 

"I thought it was calliope?" Marius only receives a glare for his input.

"Calliope?"

"No; _calliope._"

"Technically speaking, the word is pronounced-"

Tim cuts off Ivy before she, or anyone else for this matter, can try to pronounce the stupid word. "Who cares, it's a haunted instrument. It sounds weird and means nothing. SHUT. UP." 

Marius doesn't even get his mouth open all the way before he gets a good dose of gunpowder to the face. 

* * *

Several time periods into the game and Marius has been shot 23 times, blow up twice, Brian has to tie up Tim 11 times, Raphaella started 6 new experiments, and Ivy was just enjoying it all. They'd gone through 10 tape recorders and missed 2 whole stories just because someone needed to explode the damn tapes. AND there was still no sign of Ashes, just Jonny endlessly talking in that weird accent, as Marius so often liked to point out, normally at the expense of his own bones and blood. 

“Are they sure most of these things aren’t just octokittens? They kind of _ sound _ like octokittens.” The tape is paused for now, meaning Marius won’t get shot at for interrupting the show. Not that he hasn’t been doing that every time regardless. Self preservation has a slightly different definition to the ‘baron.’

“The versatility of the octokitten means that technically _ anything _ can seem like an octokitten.” Ivy points out. “The comparison runs from sawdust to badgers to blenders.”

“I mean, consider all these stories about silver worms; couldn’t they just be octokittens?”

“When was the last time you saw an octokitten create a living hive inside a person’s body?” Raphaella sounds less skeptical and more intrigued by the idea. Really, these stories were just giving her far too much inspiration. 

“When was the last time you _ saw an octokitten _?"  
  
“...That’s a good point. When _ was _ the last time we saw an octokitten?”

**Author's Note:**

> normally i put a lot more thought on the structure and morals and characterization of these stories, but this time i'm just here for the lolz (do the kids still say that?)


End file.
